through someone else’s eyes

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“… ever wonder what life looks like through someone else’s eyes?”

Marissa <on OC>

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I am very much a be yourself, be true to thineself, maintain your individuality, look inside rather than without type of guy.

Possibly to a fault. What I mean by that is while it is incredibly important to maintain a true compass of ‘self’ (worth and what you value), you do have to touch base with the real world on occasion to be sure you haven’t entered into some alternative universe of one.

Anyway.

I am this way probably because most of my youth I was told over and over again who I was supposed to be and how to act and what I was supposed to do <and I did not like it>.

Regardless.

Every once in a while you need to make sure you haven’t become a joke. That may sound a bit harsh, but, life is tricky in that often no one actually tells you that you are a joke, or even tell you the joke, or let you in on the joke.

Ok.

Again, that was a bit  of a harsh view.

Maybe every once in a while you just need to check in with the rest of the world and see what life looks like through some one else’s eyes. Why? Perspective is always good. To be clear, perspective seeking is only as good as your seriousness with regard to looking for perspective. I say that because it is very very easy to disregard what you see around you under the guise of “I am what I am <and I won’t change>.”

Look.

It is a fine line between being yourself and fitting in … and not fitting in by being obstructively individual.

Yikes. Even typing in the words ‘fitting in’ sends a shiver up my spine. But if we are honest, even the most independent ‘fuck the world’ people recognize that being successful in life needs some aspects of fitting into the world around you. So, at minimum, you have to find your ‘minimal viable fit-inedness’.

Anyway. I imagine the point is that simply being different for different sake is not only silly, but it is also non productive. But embracing your individuality is not silly nor non productive. Therein lies Life’s challenge. That amazingly difficult in between.

I know when I teach high school classes about preparing for the real world and talk with them about what it takes to be successful in a career <and life> I end up discussing balancing individuality and integrating into ‘mainstream life’ a lot. Interestingly the discussion often revolves around … well .. what I call a discussion of economic crisis versus economic moral crossroads.

And it’s not really a morals gap or a lack of morals or greed or whatever.

Because we all have morals and values and we all have a sense for what is right and wrong <particularly teens>; it is just priorities.

We discuss whether America’s dreams have become too bloated.

We discuss whether their own dreams are too bloated.

We discuss the fact that pandering to a bloated dream pisses me off.

False dreams piss me off.

Circling back to the point of this piece, in the end we find that sometimes looking at the world thru some one else’s eyes sometimes is an opportunity to realign reality.

By the way. This does not mean judging yourself through someone else’s eyes. Heck. It does not even mean judging yourself through society’s eyes <however warped that perspective may be>.

Once again it is simply about perspective.

The main thing I end up discussing is “character.” I describe it as a fork in the road. Or multiple forks in the road. A moment, or moments, where you have a choice which helps define who you will be moving forward in life.

I don’t mean to suggest I know “the right path” all I mean is that we all have choices to do “the right thing” or “the wrong thing” or even “less wrong thing” and those types of decisions go a long way to defining “once and for all who you are.”

The other thing to note is each moment matters. They may not matter equally … but they all matter.

What I mean by that is if you find an excuse to not do what is best one moment, the next moment is even easier to not do the right thing <don’t let anyone tell you otherwise … this is an inevitable Life truth>.

All that said.

On occasion you should wonder what the world looks like to someone else.

It’s simply called ‘perspective.’

Nothing more.

Nothing less.

You may not only look at the world a little differently … you may look at yourself a little differently.

Just be careful as you do so because “never compare your inside with somebody else’s outside.”

Ponder.